The U.S. Coastal Passageand Caribbean Spaces of Freedom

Abstract

In November 1841, the U.S. slaver Creole transporting 135 slaves from Richmond to New Orleans was seized by nineteen slave rebels who steered the ship to the British Bahamas, where all secured their liberation. Drawing from this well-known story as a point of departure, this chapter examines the understudied maritime dimensions of British free soil policies in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on how such policies affected the U.S. domestic slave trade and slave revolts at sea. In contrast to the more familiar narrative of south-to-north fugitive slave migration, this chapter sheds light on international south-to-south migration routes from the U.S. South to the circum-Caribbean.